1 Shilling

The West African Currency Board was established in 1912 to provide a unified currency across British West Africa — Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia — replacing the chaotic mix of local coins and foreign trade currencies that had accumulated over decades of commerce. This 1 Shilling note was part of the Board's very first paper issue, prompted by the wartime coin shortages that had made small-denomination coinage across British territories genuinely difficult to obtain and circulate.

De La Rue's involvement was essentially a foregone conclusion given their near-monopoly on British colonial currency printing at the time. Pick 1 is the rarest of the inaugural series; the 1918 notes had a short active life before coin supplies normalized postwar.